In large facilities, such as office complexes, the ability to physically locate network devices such as printers, scanners, copiers etc. is useful but can be a challenge. For example, in a facility having multiple floors and multiple wings, there may be dozens or even hundreds of machines scattered throughout the facility. One primitive attempt to provide device location information has been to name each device with a location descriptive name such as “NW Printer 3”, which may correspond to a printer located in a northwest location of the facility on the 3rd floor. While this approach may work for facilities that are smaller or have a relatively small number of devices, the approach is not generally useful in larger facilities since there may be many devices located in a given location and the ability to describe the location of each device is somewhat limited by the length of a device name. Moreover, the approach requires a user to know the orientation of the facility so as to be able to locate the northwest portion. In very large facilities this can be cumbersome.
A more recent approach has been to set the geolocation of a device by using network infrastructure. For example, if a device is connected to a certain network hub known to be located in a northwest portion of a facility on the 3rd floor, such information can be used generally to locate the device. Such approach, however, is not generally very accurate and still results in some ambiguity since multiple devices (e.g., multiple printers) may be connected to a network hub, and differentiating between the multiple devices is not easily done.
Another approach has been to set a device's geolocation by proximity to a GPS enabled device. This approach is not always useful due to limitations of GPS technology. Specifically, typical GPS devices need a clear view of the sky in order to accurately obtain a position. For devices located indoors away from windows, this can present a problem since it may not be possible to obtain an accurate GPS location.